It seems that being the third week some of my kids are starting to test me to see how I will react to different things. 7th period is in to throwing things. Some of the kids refuse to listen. I've found that with a lot of them all I can do is consistently tell them to get on task. Two interesting things happened in my freshmen seminar class.
First I had a student tell me he wasn't going to work in a group. When I placed him in a group he muttered something under his breath, I can't remember what, but it was tot eh effect of he should beat me up. I think I handled well I just walked right up to him and said "what was that?" Like I hadn't heard him and was really just curious, he quickly caught on and said something clever.
Even more interesting was the discussion we had in class. The students were in groups and I gave them a scenario. I told them they were stranded on a desert island and they needed to create rules and laws for the society they would live under. At first that was all I said and I figured I'd let them run with it. I hoped that we could get into some discussion about how rules in my class were not arbitrary and in order to accomplish what we needed to we had to have some sort of rules. Instead some of the kids decided to take the chance to see what they could get away with. One group made rules that the island they landed on would be called the United States of Black People (USPB). In the USPB white people would be enslaved and the police force would be the Black KKK. A girl told me that she thought this was inappropriate, but I let it stay up so we could discuss. No one in the group would claim responsibility for writing it I asked them some could questions about what it would mean to have slavery, and what sort of police force you want to have. It was really pretty fun.
We sort of got into a discussion about race, which was not where I was looking to go, but I was ok with it. One thing that struck me though is when one of my students was talking about white racist police officers she looked at me and said "no offense". At that I paused the conversation. I almost wanted to laugh. This was the second time this had happened.
Earlier in the year during a discussion of Martin Luther King a student had said "He got killed by a white person,"looking at me"no offense." I had to stop the conversation I asked them why I would be offended at that. I knew there were racist cops. I stressed the fact that I was not responsible for their actions and that what one white person said or did was not a reflection on any one else. The same way that no one persons actions are a reflection on any race of people. All in all I thought this was an interesting experience.
4 comments:
I think you had an appropriate response to the students' curiosities and their assumptions. Have things gotten better?
I just happened to be surfing the net and came across your blog. I'm enjoying your candor.
You sound like a very dedicated and sincere teacher which is encouraging being that I am from Baltimore and I know that not all teachers in BCPS care about the children.
As an African American man with some teaching experience (via a special SPAR class); race was an issue that my students in 6th grade loved to discuss and because few other classes allowed them the opportunity to talk about the real "racial" world that they encountered; I let them go for it from time to time in my classroom too.
Some of my White colleagues who were in the room got a little uncomfortable with the discussions, but what I (and other African American educators) tried to share with them was that for people of African descent in America the issue of race is all around us and confronts us daily. White people just aren't forced to confront race in the way and with the frequency that Brown people in America are forced to.
I applaud you for giving your students a safe place to engage this weighty issues.
I don't know if things have gotten better or if I am getting into a routine of accepting misbehavior. Since this happend we really haven't had as much of an oppurtunity to have classroom discussions. Since this did occur we read an article about teh usage of the word niggar. This got a lot of my students fairly interested in what we were talking about. The immediate reaction students had was shock. "How could ahwite teacher be bringing this article into class." THe class mostly seemed to come to a consensus that it using the owrd nigga depended on who was saying it and how it was being used.
Students came to teh conclusion that it was ok for black people to say it but if I said it I should be beat up. This discussion really made the students curious about me. I got asked several questions such as if I had any black friends or if I ever used the N word.
Since then the class has been less than motivated to participate in class discussions.
very interesting blog. your efforts are needed in this city!!
carl
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